My mom is the queen of kitchen utensils. When she visits she always bemoans my lack of kitchen utensils, and I always roll my eyes a little. How many gizmos does a woman need to cook a decent meal?
That said, I went to a Pampered Chef party a few weeks ago and bought a few gadgets I am very excited about. Most notable is this one:
While visiting my mom a while back she handed me this when I was cooking up some ground beef. This utensil chops up ground meat perfectly into small bits while you cook it. SOOOO much better than attacking it with a spoon, hoping to chop it into smaller pieces. So I totally couldn't resist getting one for myself, and I am already loving it.
This spoon rest is another buy I am very excited about. I am used to just putting my cooking utensils down on the counter next to the stove while cooking, and it always gets the counter dirty (and sometime I "forget" to clean up after myself for a little while). So this is a very exciting purchase, as the white part is easily rinsed off and replaced in the rest.
The item I was most hesitant about purchasing, but went with anyway, was this stone cookie sheet
I've been wanting to try stoneware for a while now, as it becomes seasoned over time (like cast iron), and cooks things very evenly. I use our cookie sheets to bake so many different things, so I decided to take the plunge and try this out. Metal cookie sheets can be a pain, as they get icky so quickly.
I haven't been disappointed yet, and I ended up making my best batch of cookies yet on this. It will take a little while to become seasoned, but over time it will be a perfect baking surface.
I made my
favorite cookie recipe and it turned out amazingly better than it did on the metal cookie sheets I was using before
Do you have any favorite kitchen gadgets/gizmos/utensils?
Well, I spend quite a lot of time in the kitchen, but I've never heard of any of these items. I'm a bit of a minimalist, so I tend to avoid single-purpose items (I separate minced beef with a regular fork and place the cooking utensils on a plate by the side of the stove, for example), but I'm intrigued by that stone cookie sheet! I bake a lot and while I get great results with the metal sheet that came with the oven I'd really be interested to see how this differs. Have you tried using it for something besides cookies, by any chance?
ReplyDeleteI WANT ONE OF THOSE GROUND BEEF CHOPPER GIZMOS!!!!! SO cool! I really hate to stand there trying to break up ground meat with a dumb spoon (no offense to spoons ... they are great at what they're made for!).
ReplyDeleteI have all three of those! Use the spoon rest constantly, the ground beef chopper thing occasionally and the cookie sheet almost every day. Mine is so seasoned that it is black. Granted I bake everything on it, not just cookies and I have had mine for close to 9 years!
ReplyDeleteI am with you in that I don't like a million utensils, but that meat thingabobber DOES look awesome. hmm.... I don't even know anyone who sells pampered chef.
ReplyDeleteAll of us cook a lot of gourmet meals and we cook everything from scratch so our kitchen gets quite a workout. I'm not into gadgets. Our kitchen is very small and has very little storage so I need to keep things streamlined. I could not live without my wustoff knives, though. I even take them when we stay in vacation houses. One kitchen gadget I do love is my Tupperware citrus peeler. I've tried others and none are as good as the free ones Tupperware gives out when you make a purchase. For the record you can now buy these in bulk on eBay.
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